Pontic Chariots Meet Punic Elephants Massive Battles

Hey what's up guys it's Dunkley and we're gonna be playing a huge battle in Rome 2. I'm gonna be playing as Pontus, my opponent is Carthage. This is gonna be large funds, huge army sizes. Rules were six of the same unit kind and then two artillery max. So I've brought a bit of a kind of a standard historical build that you might see from Pontus. Obviously lots of cavalry heavy troops, some of them being melee and then of course a fair amount of them being drawn from the noble nomadic tribes. So mercenaries, scythians always going to be featured in the tribes to the east. Very powerful ranged troops that could do a lot for early harass, scouting and could tear apart enemy forces. So they're going to be a staple of eastern warfare. So these guys are deployed over here and what I've done in my battle line is I've backed them up with an eastern spearman and then I've got a couple little hidden pontic peltas in case the enemy had a cavalry engagement I can bait them into these little ambushes. Meanwhile the rest of my force is really strong in the rear where I have kind of these scythe chariots leading infantry columns and that's going to be slowly pushing forward. They are going to be guarded by two eastern scorpions moving up and then an initial force of slingers backed by hoplites or hoplites moving behind that and on the far right flank I've screened with the scythian horse archer force plus some eastern archers and thoreos spears. My opponent has a large force of carthaginians that are going to decide to sit tight on their hill. They have a mix of pikemen facing the front, two of the giant onagers and then they have lines of libyan infantry, baleric slingers, a lot of peltas behind that which is a pretty good idea to try and whittle my cav down and then he has some scutarii cav and other lighter cav on the flanks. So pretty interesting army composition and I'm going to be the one who has to take the fight to him. I did want to address something real quickly before we get into the battle and that is hello. A fair amount of you watching this video may be new to the channel. I know a lot of you have watched my total war content for a long time now but just recently I launched the new moments series which is kind of a short bite-sized approach to history where we're able to cover interesting topics and themes so I kind of slice it up where we'll do epic moments, deadly moments, tragic moments, intoxicated moments, all kinds of things like that. But anyways, I am launching the new series so I just put out a couple pilot episodes and this is kind of the pilot season where I'm testing the waters and boy oh boy did that bear fruit. The first episode seems to be going viral which has me very excited. I posted it, it got about 20k views, started to die down and then after that it exploded right as of recording this. I believe it's pushed past easily 200,000 views so it's exploding right now. That has me very excited and it has led to a spike in subscribers so there may be some people watching this video who are new to the channel. I know as I said a lot of you are long-time viewers and subscribers but just for those of you who may be new, what my channel is about is it's a mix of total war content. So total war is a strategy game that mixes campaign level turn-based action and real-time battles. So if you haven't played total war, definitely check it out. I do a lot of that. I cover the news and gameplay but then that is kind of the day-to-day of my channel. The big events that will be kind of defining what I do on my channel however is going to be the documentaries. So the moment series is a newer short-form documentary style that I'm going to be embracing. I do expect to have that you know that like I said the success is really good. I do expect to have that kind of hit its stride and come out every other week and then eventually if I can get it up and running to have that come out every week. So expect that to be a staple. If you like that definitely stay tuned and enjoy and then in between you have your kind of daily total war footage and gameplay that you can enjoy. I find these battles to be very fun and it's a platform for us to talk history. So yeah that's that. Also in case you want to see some of my longer form documentaries, I have done those in the past. I have about like 20 of them I think covering all sorts of battles, the evolution of the roman legions, siege of jerusalem, lots of stuff. So definitely check that out. I'll link it below. For those of you who are you know who are familiar with my long style documentaries and are a little bit worried about the direction of moments because it might detract from my ability to cover long-term documentaries. I would say in the short term those fears are very real. I have put a bit of a pause on the longer more labor-intensive documentaries and the reason for that is I want to get the moment series up and running. Once I get the format going I can start to standardize it and start to outsource some of the artwork and kind of make it a recurring thing and once that's up and running and I can outsource some of the work it will reduce the amount of input that I have and it'll allow me to kind of get regular updates in terms of documentaries that are smaller scale while I work in the background on these big documentaries. So you know give me a little bit of time to get that up and running and we will return real shortly to the long-form historical documentaries. First one is going to be the siege of Jerusalem. Definitely have to continue that and then once that's done I promise I will make a return to the evolution of the Roman legions. That one seeks to cover the history of the Roman legions from their very inception at the you know the age of the Roman kings all the way up until the fall of the Roman Empire with imperial legions. So that's going to be a very interesting series that is definitely very interesting for people. Anyways finally we can get back to the battle. So what's been going on? Well my Scythians here have been poking forward. They are cresting the hill here and they have been finding lots of juicy targets and so that's going to be their role to stay fast and nimble and poke around at the enemy see what is here. As I move up the hill I start to see more units have dug in around the flank and so I'm just going to be a little bit wary and I'm going to come back after this cav that my opponent has forgotten to micro while he tries to take care of my other forces. Finally he does wake up but this cavalry is doomed and sensibly my opponent pulls back. You never want to be caught chasing after the steppe tribes. They will just retreat. They're faster than you and they will use the Parthian shot to tear you apart. That's what I've been doing. I've got heavy shot as well so this cav is going to get shredded. So the main line what's happening here? Well I've brought forward my skirmishers. My slingers are cheap. My opponent's balerics are much more powerful than mine and so they will beat me in a straight up fight. So I have to do a little bit of tricky stuff and so that's why you saw me earlier charging in with cavalry. What that cavalry was able to do was ward these guys off and it allowed my slingers to move in close and while the enemy missile troops were redeploying I was able to get some free shots on them. So that's a tried and true tactic that you'll see me employ. Anyways now that we're going to be face to face skirmisher to skirmisher I will probably lose this fight. So the way to win this type of engagement is focus fire. So what I'm going to be doing is focusing fire on one of his units. He seems to be kind of splitting up his damage amongst various troops but focusing fire is much more practical because if you can knock out key units that'll really greatly reduce the amount of incoming fire. So focus fire on getting a single unit out at a time and then proceed to the next one. It'll be much more cost efficient over time. And yeah so this is working well. The enemy does have the support of their giant onagers. These guys are really expensive units that can dish out a tremendous amount of damage but their accuracy isn't that great. They're better used against walls. You can see here the shots that do come raining in are going to largely miss my troops. A couple of them are going to hit clusters but it's really not worth it in terms of the money investment. And then here comes the huge slow monotonous move of my armored corps. The true pride of the Pontic army. And Pontus is a really interesting faction. It would have been in Anatolia and the most interesting part historically for me is the time of the Mithridatic Wars. I read an awesome history book on that called The Poisoned King by Adrian Mayer. I really really really recommend that. It covers the rise and fall of the Mithridates and within that you get the three Mithridatic Wars. Wars where he and his kingdom were fighting against Rome. And those were extremely interesting topics. It's so cool to see how those were driven. The fear around this rising star of the east. The potential of everyone, even the Greeks, to embrace Mithridates as a savior to them. A guy who could potentially liberate them from the Romans. And so you have the Romans who are torn apart by civil war. There's the Spartacus revolts amongst all this. Rome is really teetering on the edge. And so you have a period of time where there was this threat of Mithridates being the second Hannibal. So you have three wars. Very interesting stuff. Lots of battles. And then on top of that the character of Mithridates, the historical character himself, is infinitely interesting. The topic of the book is called Poisoned King because he was known for ingesting poison. He did that from a very young age and he was known to try and basically take poison in little doses all the time to try and make himself immune. That part of the world politically was known for a lot of murdering of your own family for political gains. And so you would see princes and others mysteriously dying from poison. And so Mithridates poisoned others in his rise to power and he tried to protect himself from poison. What he would often do with political prisoners or enemy prisoners is he would use them as kind of guinea pigs for different poisons and antidotes that he would concoct. So a very interesting character who was basically unable to be poisoned because the amount of poison that he took over time. So that's a really interesting character. And the practice of defending yourself against poison by having this concoction that you would take daily to build up your resistance. And yeah, this elixir would be a very closely guarded secret. Something that the kings in Europe would try and years after try and take and recreate over time because there were poisoning threats obviously in medieval Europe and other places. And they tried to reconcoct Mithridates famous elixir that he would take to protect himself. And so they would have all sorts of different competing recipes to try and make themselves immune. So his legacy was pretty intense. Ultimately he was defeated but it caused a real scare for the Romans. In every Mithridatic war when he was beaten down he would go back lick his wounds and come back almost stronger than before. Every time you know somehow miraculously rebuilding his power base either by you know digging into the treasure that he'd hidden away in mountain fortresses. Really crazy stuff so I recommend that book entirely. It is so freaking interesting. In terms of his army composition he wasn't necessarily that great of a general and the generals that he had at his side were pretty good but not necessarily that competent especially against the Roman legions who you know were coming to face them. Who had had years of experience fighting against Spartacus against other Romans and so it was very hard to beat the Romans in open field battles. Although there were a couple reversals against the Romans. One of them actually wasn't necessarily against Rome's armed forces but in one of the Mithridatic wars before it Mithridates himself organized a vast conspiracy to kill Romans. I believe he ended up killing about oh here come the chariots. He ended up killing about uh was it 60 to 80,000 Romans in the east. Essentially what he did is he sent messages all throughout Anatolia to all the communities who were being racked by Roman tax collectors and had very you know big animosity against the Romans and so what he did is he sent messages to all the governors and all the people and said on this date rise up and kill all the Romans amongst you and so that date came and across the board everywhere the people rose up and slaughtered Roman citizens and merchants and other people who were in Anatolia at that time. A region that was not under the control of the Roman legions but had you know big influence from the Romans and so that was a really interesting thing that really appalled the Romans and it's one of the things obviously that led to the Mithridatic wars but it was a very bold move from Mithridates to try and pull off something like that and so you have in the book that I was reading stories about what happened that day with slaughter happening everywhere where Roman citizens were slaughtered in the temples. Usually that would be a safe space but they were even slaughtered in the temples in the streets the blood-soaked temple of Artemis I believe was famous for that but yeah that was just a brutal moment in history and that's something that I will try and you know share with you guys in a future historical moment series where we'll be able to cover you know brutal moments in history Mithridates terrorist attack or the 80,000 slaughtered or something like that but yeah that's why I started the moment series because little moments in history like that are infinitely interesting but there's no real way for me to cover that in a traditional documentary so that's about that. Back to the what's been happening in this battle well you saw me launch a chariot assault it was okay but the main problem I'm dealing with is he has a lot of javelins and those will shred your chariots same thing with the Libyan infantry they still have their precursors and so I'm gonna have to pull back with my chariots and wait for him to be distracted or waste his ammo so yeah that was a bit of a failed chariot assault I did get 32 kills and 63 so pretty good but I'm gonna wait to chip away at the opponent on this flank my Scythians have been continuing to just digest whatever my opponent has on this flank he did charge after me with some cavalry we've been able to kill those and now his infantry that tried to deal with me is also going to be slaughtered I pulled up my hidden peltas and they've been able to deal with these guys rather successfully and so now we're going to close in on the enemy hilltop position and why I'm bringing these peltas in here is well I want to be able to use their armor piercing damage to take out these very costly mercenary samnite warriors so that's kind of my play on the right flank to come around here get some cavalry around the back and start to harass his units over here I've started to engage with my units two thorough spears against a mercenary noble fighter that fight is not going to go my way but meanwhile it's just a holding force and they're going to be biding time while my phalanx starts to push up and the phalanx was something that I believe the mithridates did try and incorporate into his armies as he tried to reform them pouring lots of money into his force to try and modernize them to contend with the during I think it was the second or third war where he came over to Greece where he ended up using mass pikes but anyways another thing that I'm doing here is I'm sacrificing my eastern slingers they're out of ammo and now what I'm doing is I'm draining all of my opponent's precursors and that's in anticipation of my big push with the pontic swordsman and potentially my chariots so here comes the push peltas going to be moving in on the right hand side we can see as their volleys start to reign in the shields are going to absorb this but it's going to start to wear on their health and yeah just as he retreats that's going to be the perfect opportunity for me to charge in with my chariots I was forcing him to retreat I'm going to bite a couple volleys but then I'm going to catch these units kind of dead in their tracks they try and reform and turn about to me so I'm going to have to make sure I continue to right click to pull through and so that's what you see me doing here pulling through his forces he's got more units in back but I'm able to kind of clip them hit them from the flank and then turn back around all this disruption is going to allow me to circle up with my cav and we can watch the glorious charge into his disrupted infantry he's going to throw a little bit of a volley but the rest of my cav is going to charge right in let's watch this boom glorious charge in so this is going to be a big mess up through the center and I'm going to cycle out with my with my chariots so that's happening here my peltas are going to come in to engage in the flank my scythians sitting in the back and then in the center we're going to get a big charge infantry versus infantry spontex swordsmen not necessarily known for being too sturdy but I have three versus two so I do expect this to hold up pretty well mean all over here my pikes are engaging with the enemy pikes the enemy is going to be firing in with his onagers which are going to be starting to take a chunk out of my forces but I've been able to destroy this one pushing in through with my pikemen and seeing them off you know over here I do spot an opportunity to charge in with my scythian horse archers I did want to hit these peltas to try and silence them but my guys are light and so they're not really going to do too much one of them is going to charge through and try and hit his um his uh spears my other cavalry force was supposed to charge in but he's going to get blocked and so now his peltas are just going to unload on my light scythian so it's not looking good for my guys but I was able to disrupt his african pikemen and I have lots of volleys coming in here elephants meanwhile charge through the gap and this is going to be pretty brutal they charge after two of my infantrymen and are going to just tear through them so the carthaginians obviously known for their use of war elephants here teaching my army that these guys are a real threat and of course that's something that Hannibal was known for and the carthaginians were known for elephants weren't necessarily that good in battle a lot of times they would run amok they're more used for psychological uh effects and yeah here they're getting shredded once they're caught up I have all my uh well my infantry were destroyed but behind that I have and I have my scorpions here with big fat targets painted on those elephants they're going to be trying to snipe them and you can see them let's watch a couple bolts as they fly off and yeah those elephants are going to be seen off pretty handily I believe they're going to start running amok with the casualties that they've gotten but I think they've gotten a fair amount of kills from that engagement so it's a pretty good trade uh yeah there you can see they're running amok with almost 200 kills so they flatten my infantry uh but now against light troops elephants fare notoriously poorly up through the center I've been able to pour through with some of my hoplites and they're going to come after the enemy units in the center cavalry is now in the enemy lines running amok slicing and dicing my chariots have pulled back through still alive still chugging through the enemy this engagement is infantry versus cavalry a battle that without much support from the enemy I should be able to tear through eventually um not the best engagement for cavalry they obviously want to be cycle charging but I vastly outnumber the Libyans meanwhile in the center the crush here of my uh own pontic swordsman plus chariots charging in through the flank is going to be super effective it's going to see them off and I'm going to try and turn about and hit the enemy force I got a kite a pike unit here that I unfortunately charge in through the front on and so that's going to kill off even more of my chariots but I engage with some of them and so they're going to be losing some men but the battle is going very much in my favor my general here is going to charge after Libyan infantry that were not formed up or braced so it's going to be another nice pickup for me and it's at this point in the battle where the enemy line has broken cohesion that that's where your cavalry is going to reign supreme so you can see them running amok everywhere they're going to get into these peltas and then my mass of troops is just going to infiltrate the enemy lines some pikes trying to hold firm by the but their days are certainly numbered even some eastern archers committing to the fight helping to clean up just with their sheer numbers and we're going to be able to turn about and help this front out again it's cavalry versus infantry my opponent I believe is fielding here some noble oh no these are pikemen oh sorry these are my pikemen the enemy has holy crap noble fighters with 287 those guys have been doing tremendous amounts of work that's crazy oh shoot here comes a clean charge into unbraced infantry again doing lots of damage once more oh and these onagers were invisible that's funny when they were out of line of sight but yeah the state of the battle is a pretty big resounding victory for me took a fair amount of losses in certain parts but overall I would say this is a very nice victory chariots still surviving dying somewhat to friendly fire but they're going to get their final kills here against this last unit so that's it for the battle hope you guys enjoyed and again to those of you who are new to the channel welcome stay tuned for more of the history content and also these total war battles I hope you guys enjoy this format and I think the mix of two is a nice trade-off where we get these kind of day-to-day exciting multiplayer battles and then the kind of higher value unique content every other week so it allows for a nice consistent stream of you know mixed content so that's it for this battle let's end the replay take a look at some of the final stats here um I had deployed um you know 18 or sorry 800 more men than the opponent and I killed 3k he killed 2600 uh so really heavy blows being dealt to both sides on my side of the battlefield my general getting a lot of kills calverding um where are they um yeah sithians tearing it up these guys are pretty cheap troops light troops with 109 kills that's really good work most of it actually being done to enemy heavy cav so that is a good trade my pontic sword has been doing pretty well some of them not doing okay but the chariot here with 423 chevrons that is awesome the other one not doing too well he's the one who got killed by a lot of javelins early on um what else can I say skirmishers doing good trading well and even my eastern scorpions here with a funny unit card uh getting a decent amount of kills uh on the opponent's side this african war elephant with 236 is very very good definitely paid for himself the two carthaginian heavy onagers definitely not good I probably would have been investing in something a bit lighter like eastern scorpions that could take out some of my beefy uh cavalry blobs from a distance uh onagers almost never pay for themselves um what else did well well his libyans cleaned house uh calvary didn't do too well some of the belaric slingers did okay the rest were focus fired and killed and his infantry corps did really well I mean these mercenary noble fighters when they got into my thoreo spears and other units just tore it up libyan infantry here with 243 117 102 these guys did really well even his pikemen doing really good so his infantry corps was really solid performance against my guys I think if he'd had a little bit more defense against my cavalry prevented me from wrapping around um he could have done some serious damage against me and again I think that could have been achieved by um switching out these two onagers for scorpions and then instead of having scutari cav that were out and about he should have kept them behind his lines for the majority of the battle um without range cavalry units uh there's not much they and so these guys should have been kept in reserve uh but yeah that's it for this battle hope you guys enjoyed stay tuned for more and definitely check out those documentaries see you in the next one peace out